


whatever comes next

by izzylizardborn



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Kissing, Multi, Mutual Pining, Post-The Raven King, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, The Raven King Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-03-20 14:24:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18994393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzylizardborn/pseuds/izzylizardborn
Summary: They were supposed to be in the Everglades, rowing down a river in a canoe.Instead, they were here. In the almost-dark of a summer storm at 6 pm; in no air conditioning, in no electricity; in the same bed, on top of the same sheets.Henry was laying in the middle. He wasn’t sure how. He wasn’t sure of anything except one thing: This was not allowed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a story about sarchengsey falling in love and figuring out how to handle that, with all the tact of a bunch of clumsy idiot teens.

Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told that she would kill her true love. And now, she had.

Sacrifices exchanged. Prophecy fulfilled. Fate met and matched and outsmarted. 

And, miraculously, everyone asleep. Each of them had staked claim to a territory of the Fox Way living room — Gansey curled into the couch; Henry slung across an armchair; Adam and Ronan, each tucked under a blanket on the floor; Blue laying on a yoga mat — and now, they rested. Just for tonight. Just for a few hours, until daylight and everything else caught up to them again. 

But Blue couldn’t sleep. Or wouldn’t. Or it didn’t matter. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw it again. Adam, frozen. Ronan, weeping. Henry, hopeful or desperate or just dumb enough to be right, demanding they do _something_.

And Gansey, rumpled and limp as they dragged his body into the grass.

That one minute, over and over, like time was still stuck. They’d saved him. Only barely, but they had. 

And she was relieved. Of course she was. The moment he took a breath, she had too, and it was like the first breath of her life. 

But relief was only warm because of how cold she’d been before. It wasn’t enough to lull her to sleep. 

An hour from sunrise, she gave up, slipping out from under the blanket and navigating silently to the stairs. She knew where to step so the floors wouldn’t creak, and she knew how to turn the corners without bumping into them, so she made it all the way to Maura’s door without making a sound. 

She balled up her fist to knock, but it opened before she could. Maura took her hand, eased her fingers flat, gave her palm a squeeze, and brought her inside. 

There was an uneven skyline of candles lit on the floor, and beside them, a spread of cards. The flames flickered, so the shadows did too. A cord in her chest trembled along with the light, but she coughed it away and asked, firmly, “What do they say?” 

“Tonight,” Maura said, looking back at her, “I think we all have more questions than answers.”

Blue snorted, but something in her chest tugged loose, like the last thread in a spool. If she was being sensible, it made sense that even a psychic couldn’t find clarity tonight. The ley line had endured their trauma with them — the energy was probably too busy righting itself to lend power to anyone else. 

But she wasn’t being sensible. She couldn’t be, now that she was living past the end of her prophecy. For as long as she’d known it, she’d resented it, but now that it was gone… she didn’t know. She didn’t know what happened now any more than she did as she stared over Gansey’s corpse. It was all so senseless. So unsure. 

And there was her mother, looking at her like she might have the answers. “What?” Blue said. Snapped. She didn’t mean to.

But Maura wasn’t fazed. “How did you do it?”

“You know how."

Maura’s eyes softened in the candlelight. “I mean, how did you save him?”

“ _I_ didn’t save him. It was Ronan who asked Cabeswater to die in his place. And Adam who thought of it. And Henry who insisted.” 

And then she was crying, and it made her furious. She swiped at her tears before they could fall, and spears of pain shot into the wound at her eye. The demon in Adam’s hands had pulled the stitches, and she’d need to go to the doctor first thing tomorrow. If it wasn’t going to scar before, it definitely was now. Which seemed as right and horrible as everything else. 

Maura let out a long breath and pulled her into a hug. Blue didn’t think she wanted to be held, but now that she was, she couldn’t bear to pull away. She didn’t think she could cry any more, but now that she was, she thought she might never stop. 

She did, though. It took time, but she did. Then they sat down on the end of the bed, and Blue pulled her knees up to her chest. With stinging eyes, she looked down at the cards again. 

From here, she could see. There were the Page of Cups and Death. But between them lay another card. A man on horseback, decorated and determined. 

The Knight of Wands. 

Blue cleared her throat. “What did you ask about?” 

“Your curse.”

“And?”

“I don’t know.”

Blue blinked down at the cards, like she had any hope of divining meaning from them when her mother couldn’t. “Who’s the knight?”

“Not every card is someone, you know. Sometimes it’s a symbol, or a circumstance, or—“

“I know,” she said, because she did. But she _knew_ , so she asked again. “Who is he?”

Maura shut her eyes and sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “But he’s someone.”

Goosebumps raised on Blue’s skin and she wrapped her arms tighter around her legs. This is what she’d wanted, right? A future, a promise. Some meaning in the mess. “That’s not anything. Everyone is someone.”

“Someone to you,” Maura said, “Someone to both of you.”

Blue on one side. Gansey on the other. And between them, this knight. Maybe a barrier. Maybe a bridge. 

The reading was imprecise, like most fortunes were. But it was something, almost. Not enough, not an answer, but _something_. 

She dropped her head into her arms, let her eyes sink shut. For now, she saw only black. “Mom,” she said, “What now?”

Maura rested an arm around her back, rested her head against her shoulder. It was the weight of the whole world. “Now,” Maura said, softly, bravely, “Now, my dear, whatever comes next.”


	2. Chapter 2

“And where was the Unclaimed Baggage Center?” 

Blue put her finger at a crossroads in Alabama. Henry marked the place where her skin met the road with a waxy diner crayon that perfectly matched the green of her nail polish. 

“And the Very Big Boot?” Not the biggest boot — that was in Texas — but an impressively and impractically large one. 

Gansey leaned across the table and carefully tapped the tip of his pen against a spot between Huntsville and Birmingham. Then he leaned back and resumed his own work, making notes or doodles in his newer, emptier journal. He’d barely touched his burger, but that was normal — at night, especially after a lot of driving, he sometimes got too introspective to eat. Blue didn’t have that same gene. She had eaten her entire grilled cheese, plus all Gansey’s fries, plus half Henry’s shake. She reached over to grab the glass and make it a third, elbowing him along the way. “Put the Carhenge,” she instructed. 

“I already did.”

“Yeah, but the other one.”

“Right.”

There’d been a few Carhenges now. Henry didn’t know why, but they seemed to be everywhere. But they were still worth marking, because everything was. Every few nights, they did this: went back over the days previous and pulled out their favorites to mark on the map, dotting the country with moments to remember. They had plenty of photos, and they certainly weren’t going to forget a single minute of this summer, but the map was good. Pragmatic and fanciful all at once. Showed them where they’d been. Showed them where they still had left to go. 

It had been Gansey’s idea. The intention had been to do it each night, before they laid down to rest. But often they were too busy living to remember recording it, so on nights like this, they caught up. Or, let the world catch up with them. 

“Did you get Jurassic Park?” Gansey asked.

He hadn’t. “Good catch, Ganseyman. What color?” He fanned the four crayons between his fingers, and Gansey chewed his lip before selecting the red with the very tip of his finger.

“Excellent choice.” He put the red dot where it belonged. 

“Can I get anything else for y’all?” the waitress asked. She was tired, and it reminded him that it was after midnight. 

“I think we’re done,” Henry said, flashing a smile at her and folding up the map. Blue, Resident Keeper of The Map, took it and shoved it into the depths of her backpack. 

The waitress tapped the tabletop and said she’d be right back. Gansey rose in her wake, rubbing his eye and saying he’d be right back as well. 

“Don’t fall in,” Blue called, and from the slope of his shoulders alone, Henry could tell he had smiled. 

“How many miles must we go,” Henry asked, “before The King simply admits he must take a leak?”

Blue put on her best Gansey impression. “Urinating is just so… callough.”

“I’m not sure ‘callough’ is a word. Perhaps ‘uncouth.’”

Blue then put on her best Henry impression, swiping his milkshake from him once more. “Perhaps ‘your mom.’”

Henry was grinning when the waitress returned with their receipt. Blue reached into her bag to find Gansey’s wallet — she was the Resident Keeper of that too, and most things, now that Henry thought about it — but, buried up to her shoulder in her backpack, she stopped. 

Their _receipts._ Two of them. Henry pinched the slip of paper closest to him. His receipt — his and Blue’s. Gansey had been rung up separately.

“Wait,” Henry said, summoning the waitress back to the table. “Actually, we’re all together.” 

“Oh,” she said, her surprise very quickly deteriorating into forced customer-service pep. “My mistake. Just thought you were…”

She didn’t say what she thought they were, but she didn’t really need to. Because if Henry thought about it, there were lots of reasons to think it. He and Blue sat elbow-to-elbow, knee-to-knee. He’d walked in wearing a jacket, and now it hung around her shoulders. Currently, she was holding his milkshake hostage between her knees. 

Blue found Gansey’s wallet and passed over the card. The waitress took back both receipts and went to ring them up. Blue said nothing, which made Henry think he was supposed to — and quickly, before Gansey returned. 

“Funny,” he said, and instantly kicked himself. It could’ve been funny, but it wasn’t. His cheeks felt warm, like he’d done something illicit, or maybe because he hadn’t. Because, passively, without even trying, he and Blue had appeared to be a couple. 

“Hilarious,” Blue said, deadpan. But the silence dragged a moment longer, and this time, Henry didn’t think he was supposed to talk, so he didn’t. A few long moments later, Blue said, “I don’t want Gansey to think— I don’t want _anyone_ to think…”

“No, of course not.” Half a year ago, Henry had offered Blue a ride home and received the same reminder. _Naturally not_ , he’d said, a promise that had seemed so simple then. 

Now, he told himself again. _Naturally not._

“It’s— he’s—“

Henry did not need to be told what Gansey was or wasn’t; what his and Blue’s relationship was or wasn’t. “I know.” 

The waitress returned with the check and Henry forged Gansey’s signature, leaving a generous tip. Blue took Gansey’s card back, sheathed it back in his wallet, and then buried it back where it belonged. 

Gansey returned, patting his half-damp hands on the fronts of his chinos. “Something must be done about hand dryers. They’re a scourge.”

“Tell that to the trees,” Blue mumbled. She zipped up her bag. In doing so, she’d shifted her body away from Henry’s, and his whole right side felt cold without her. 

And then they left. Gansey was none wiser, which was for the best. For all his strength, he was prone to insecurity. No — chronic certainty that he was not worthy. No — an anxiety disorder. 

Whatever it was, Henry had no intention of troubling Gansey. Troubling what he and Blue had together. They deserved that, at the very least.

And the next morning, at breakfast, Blue sat on Gansey’s side of the table. 

It made sense, in the same way the rest of it made sense. When they stopped in hotels, they always got two beds or two rooms, Henry sleeping alone so Gansey and Blue could sleep together. When they walked on narrow sidewalks, Henry fell back a step so Gansey and Blue could keep holding hands. When Gansey introduced them to friendly strangers, Blue was his girlfriend and Henry was their friend. 

Blue and Gansey were a couple. Of course. Obviously. Obviously. 

But if it was obvious, he shouldn’t’ve kept _noticing_ it. 

And the more he noticed it, the more he noticed other things. The shape of Blue’s hand when she steadied herself on his shoulder to wiggle her feet into her shoes, or the strange satisfaction of watching her shop through his suitcase for clothing she could pilfer. The brush of Gansey’s fingers over his when he passed him a cup of coffee, or the inexplicable relief when Gansey woke him up in the middle of the night with his insomniatic fumbling, because he’d rather be woken than know Gansey spent the night alone. 

That was the first time it happened the other way around. Somewhere between San Francisco and San Diego, they caught a cold — all three of them, all at once. The Pacific Coast was itself a cure to all ailments, with its sunshine and sea air, so they Airbnb’d a cottage by the beach and bunkered down to recover. 

Blue took a shot straight from the bottle of NyQuil and slept even harder than usual. But Henry was up just after midnight, when Gansey got stuck in a coughing fit. 

For a while, they didn’t say anything. Like maybe if they both laid there, two yards, a bed, and a Blue apart, sleep would sneak back in and claim them both. But Gansey kept coughing, and Henry’s lungs ached in sympathy, and nobody’s fever cared that it was one in the morning; they were awake. 

“Richard,” Henry said, finally, “Let’s get you some air.”

They slipped on shirts and sandals and snuck out the back door. The moon was new, or somewhere out of sight, leaving nothing but sparse yellow streetlights as they took the short walk to the ocean. Or — almost. They stopped at the waist-high wall that kept the sand from interfering with the road, and then they sat on it, legs hanging, toes brushing the beach.

Further down the shoreline, a bonfire brewed, far enough that it was just a candle in the darkness. But a party stirred around it, the strongest of the laughs and cheers echoing off the water and back to them. 

Otherwise, it was quiet. Gansey’s coughs. Henry’s sniffles. The waves on the shore, too dark to see but loud enough to swallow up most everything else. Like a headache, Henry thought. Like a heartbeat. Like Gansey’s elbow pressed against his, hot, fever and summertime. 

But they were ill and it was past midnight and nothing meant anything. So Henry just sat there and felt it. 

Eventually, a pair of stumbling silhouettes made their way down the beach, wandering close enough to take shape — two girls, clumsy drunk, debating the merits of vodka versus tequila.

“Hey!” one of them said, and dragged the other over to where Henry and Gansey sat. “What do you think? Tequila, right?”

Gansey said nothing, because he really wouldn’t know. Henry had never seen him drink anything stronger than champagne. 

Blue had a much sturdier constitution. She’d make the vote for vodka.

“I love a Cosmopolitan,” Henry dared say, and the other girl hooted and smacked her companion on the shoulder. As payment for his vote in the argument, she offered him the open mouth of a bottle in a brown paper bag.

He held a hand up in polite declination. “We’ve recently contracted the plague, so I’ll keep my cooties to myself.”

The first girl aww’ed sympathetically and started the long process of recalling the ingredients of a tea that she swore would cure them, and the other sipped, hiccupped, and asked their names.

It was unquestionable that Gansey was the leader of their little band — of the whole group, truly, even the members who stayed back in Henrietta — but even a king got a sore throat sometimes, so tonight he let Henry do the talking for both of them.

At least, until the girl asked, “How long have you guys been together?” and Henry’s mouth dried out like he’d had sand dumped down his throat.

“Oh,” Gansey said, when Henry failed to say anything at all. “We’re not—“

Gansey never said what they weren’t, but he didn’t really need to, because the girls fumbled out a joint an apology and soon after continued on their way, leaving nothing but an air of awkwardness and dragged footsteps in the sand.

“I’m sorry,” Henry said. 

Gansey asked, “For?”

For not responding quick enough. For being the gayest common denominator on the trip and hauling Gansey into the math by proximity alone. For still not scooting further away. “I don’t mean to cause… implication. I don’t mean to implicate you.”

“It’s a non-issue, Henry,” Gansey said, and coughed politely into the crook of his arm. When he returned it to his side, it still pressed against Henry’s. “I’m used to it. My sister’s been implying that Adam and I are an item since the first time I brought him around.”

All of Aglionby had wondered the same. About Gansey and Parrish; before that, about Gansey and Lynch. Henry had wondered too, plenty, until he was on the inside of it. He knew better now, but right there in the blackest night he’d ever seen, the thought of Gansey-and-Parrish still stuck. Parrish-and-Sargent had been a thing, once — or an almost-thing, or thing enough to not ever acknowledge directly. If Gansey and Adam had been something, once upon a time, would he know? Should he know? “Were you?”

“God. No.” 

Henry felt his face flush and was reminded again of the fever melting his brain and all his better judgment along with it. 

“I don’t mean—“ Gansey began, and cleared his throat, “It’s not… repellent. It’s just— Parrish. I didn’t— You know I don’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” Henry said, because he did. When people started wondering about Parrish-and-Lynch, Gansey had been nothing but supportive. Occasionally clumsy, but always well-intentioned. 

It was just that nobody wondered about Henry. They didn’t have to, because he made no secret of his sexuality, the fluid and noncommittal thing that it was. But in a way, its obviousness made it harder to talk about. So he and Gansey hadn’t, really, until this moment, which wasn’t talking about it but felt dangerously similar.

And instead of leaving it alone, like he should’ve, Henry asked, “Does your family say things about me?”

“No,” Gansey said, and Henry felt a single drop of disappointment splatter in his stomach. “Does yours? About me?”

“My family has always had an interest in you, Third,” he said, which wasn’t an answer. But to admit the truth was to speak it aloud, to invoke the reality of Henry-and-Gansey twice in one sitting, double the amount of times they’d ever dared to speak it before. And while Henry-and-Blue was a dangerous thing, at least that was simply a misdrawn conclusion. It wasn’t correct, but given Blue’s interest in men and Henry’s interest in anyone he liked, it was _possible_. 

Henry-and-Gansey was not. He had been given no reason to think that it was. And maybe that should’ve made it harmless, but it didn’t; it made it far worse, halfway deadly. Henry felt himself growing weaker at simply the thought of them together, and doubly so at the thought that, right next to him, Gansey was probably thinking the same and feeling nothing at all.

***

“I thought it was the Great _American_ Road Trip,” Gansey said.

“Yes, as in the continent,” Henry said, “Not as in The United States Of.” 

It was bickering in the lightest sense, the kind of argument where even the loser didn’t lose. Blue wanted to go south, toward Arizona. Henry wanted to go north and meet up with the Vancouver crew in their natural habitat. 

Gansey was playing mediator, as he usually did, because he had no stake in where they went next. If they didn’t go to Arizona now, they’d make it there next week. If they didn’t see the Vancouver crew in Vancouver, they’d see them when they flocked to Chicago for show season, or New York for internship season. It seemed unnecessary to worry over time or space when they had so much of it, when it stretched from horizon to horizon and back again.

Gansey had been born with every opportunity, but he’d never known freedom quite like this. 

“Hmmph,” Blue said, sticking her feet up onto the console, poking Gansey’s bicep with her holey sock. Her voice was the way it was when she was trying not to smile. “Fine. But if we’re crossing borders now then we’re making it to Mexico before Midsummer.”

“Deal,” Henry said. Keeping his eyes on the road, he stuck his hand into the backseat with a flourish. Blue grabbed it and bit it. 

Henry yelped, and Blue cackled. “Little beast,” Henry said, shaking his fist in the rearview. 

Gansey smiled out the window, logging this moment snug among all the others. 

He had spent so many years of his life like this, traveling without looking back. Searching and getting lost and searching some more. But this was a whole other thing. Not searching, but finding. Learning. How much luck it took to never get a speeding ticket in a car that didn’t technically exist. How many hours without sleep it took for Blue to get silly; how many hours without food it took Henry to get grumpy. The color of Henry’s eyes with the ocean reflected in them. The curve of Blue’s elbow when she tucked her arm under her pillow to sleep. The pattern of Henry’s snoring. The tremble in Blue’s lip, late at night, when they were both awake long after they should’ve been, when their rented motel bed was too small for the feelings between them, when she wanted and he wanted and they couldn’t have, when uncertainty was nearly enough to kill him. 

It wasn’t totally uncertain, he supposed, when he was feeling rational about it. It was as certain as most things were — spoken by the psychics of 300 Fox Way, read in teas and tarot cards. Now and since the day he was stung, his life was spun from energy far bigger than himself. Blue, as a mirror, reflected it back at him with double strength and crushed him underneath it. It wasn’t about a kiss, necessarily. It was about the exchange of energy. It was about his heart. 

The magic of what killed him that day on the roadside would kill him again, if he dared it to. 

But when Blue’s eyes glittered as she drove the Pig down an empty highway, or when her smile split her face as she looked up at trees a hundred times taller than her, or when they laid together under thin sheets and he felt her breath go shallow and her heartbeat pick up and her fingers quake from the cold or their closeness or the _almost_ of it all… When he was so in love with her that he couldn’t bear it on his own, that guarantee was just uncertain enough to haunt him.

Some things were certain, though. And he clung to those things. Her palm in his. The candy scent of Henry’s hair gel. The inexplicable growl of the Pig as it tracked miles of road without once needing to stop, without once needing to rest. Blue and Henry and their car. With new memories piling up all around him and the past getting further away with every mile and every minute, it sometimes seemed like they were all that existed. Just the three of them. 

And it was more than enough. More than right. He would trust either of them with everything he had.

***

Gansey had never been to Vancouver, but in a way, it was like being home. It was the toga party and all the loveliness that had become familiar, except _more_. More comfortable, now that they were all friends. More magical, now that they stood wrapped in their freedom and their future. More drunk, now that they were in a place with a lower legal drinking age.

Shenanigans. Karaoke. Truth or dare (or, mostly, truth-or-truth). Mario Kart mutinies. Music that didn’t make a shred of sense. Table tennis played with real tennis rackets. Undressing. Re-dressing. The boys seemed unable to gather and drink without costuming themselves. Ryang declared himself Tony Hawk by simply loosening his shorts. Sick Steve wore Lee-Squared’s scrubs, the ones with little candy shapes on them. Gansey allowed himself to be bestowed with a feather boa. Blue wore a cowboy hat and Elvis sunglasses from someone’s last-year Halloween costume. 

Henry wore mesh as makeshift chainmail and strapped a bunch of empty beer cans into a sword. 

“What is this?” Blue asked him.

“I’m a knight,” he said. “Duh, m’lady.” 

Gansey felt that he often missed things. Both as they were happening and after they’d happened. Once, Henry called him _intrinsically nostalgic_. Blue then called him _Old Man_. But he had not realized he had missed this particular chaos until he was in it, and he swore then that he would not miss it any further, or at least not until it was over.

So he drank a beer, which he rarely did, because it tasted too wet and because he did not trust himself to not have all his faculties, as he seemed to have a hard enough time getting things right even stone sober. But he was being present and young, and he was happy. So happy that one beer could not ruin it. 

Not two beers, either. Not even three. 

It was late by the time they put on a movie, and only then because it was Henry’s favorite, and only then because Henry seemed able to perform the entire movie from memory, making it more of riot than a show. It was Romeo and Juliet, but with more guns and Hawaiian shirts that Gansey recalled there being. And Henry was all of them. He played every character, all at once, except for when others jumped in to contribute. 

“And we mean well in going to this mask; But 'tis no wit to go,” Henry said, and Cheng2 jumped to his feet to respond, “Why, may one ask?”

“This is a terrible movie,” Blue heckled from the kitchen table, in front of a pile of Jenga blocks. 

“I dreamed a dream tonight,” Henry said, holding her at swordpoint. She grinned and swatted at it, and Ryang cried “Jenga!” as the tower fell. 

There was so much life. Always two or three scripts running at a time. People filtering in and out of the scene. 

But Gansey’s attention was fairly singular. Of course he knew Romeo and Juliet. Forbidden, starcrossed. Tragic. But he’d never seen the movie, and Henry’s half-drunk enthusiasm drew him in.

“Hey,” Blue said to Gansey, while Henry enthused boys in the kitchen. Gansey’s eyes slid over to hers, but they were hidden behind the shades. “You okay?”

He tried to tell her yes, but his words were slower than anticipated, so he nodded, and a moment later, managed, “Certainly.”

“Okay,” she said. But she was done playing Jenga, because she settled in on the couch next to him. Not next to him, not too close, but _next_ to him — pressed into the corner where the arm met the back, her knees folded up, her feet pressed into his side. He put his hand on her ankle, and she dug her heel into his hip.

He’d never caught Henry or Blue talking about it, but he knew they did. Made some agreement not to let him drift too far, get too distant. They worried about him. He resented it as much as he appreciated it. 

But right now, he didn’t need it. He knew he was being quiet, but it wasn’t because he was far away. It was because he was _here_. There was so much _here_ to be that he felt no need to contribute. 

“Are you drunk?” she asked him.

“Why?”

“Because you look drunk.” She grinned and reached over to pinch at his cheek, right at his dimple.

He loved her. He’d told her plenty of times, and felt it always, but he felt it especially right then, and almost worked out the words to tell her now, too, when Henry crashed over the coffee table and back into the role of Romeo.

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand…”

It did not matter that there was no Juliet; he spun her around the room anyway. Gansey watched, dizzied and hypnotized. Henry was a terrible dancer, and even worse with no partner, but it matched the scene on the screen behind him, the room behind him, all motion and movement and costume and play. He spun and spun until he returned to the spot in front of Gansey. 

“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”

Gansey stood. It seemed like the thing to do, though he couldn’t remember his line— Juliet’s.

It didn’t matter. Henry continued anyway, close to Gansey’s face. “They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”

Gansey liked Shakespeare, but right then, he liked it more than usual — not for the words, but for the sounds of them coming out of Henry’s mouth.

“Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take,” Henry said.

 _Oh_ , Gansey thought with clarity he didn’t know he possessed, _He’s going to kiss me._

It wasn’t the first time he’d ever thought it. There was once, just before graduation, standing around backstage in caps and gowns and victory — something about Henry’s smile. And another time, on the first night of the road trip, when Blue had fallen asleep in the backseat but they were both too wired to rest, so they laid on the hood of the Pig and looked up at the stars and then looked at each other — something about the way they didn’t say a single word. 

But he’d never done more than think it. Certainly never so much as _believed_ it, the way he did just then.

In the time it took for his heart to leap, Henry pressed his mouth against Gansey’s. Henry was theatric for his audience. Gansey was slack with surprise and dumb from three beers. 

It took him a moment to realize it was happening. And by the time he had, Henry was careening back on a breathless laugh, turning away to accept his applause and take a bow. 

Gansey looked to Blue. She took off her sunglasses and folded them around her fingers. Her mouth pursed like she was about to say something, but instead she left out the front door.

Gansey sank back down on the couch and palmed his hand over his mouth, wiping away the sticky feeling of beer and the softer feeling of Henry’s lips. 

Juliet said, “You kiss by the book.”

Gansey’s chest ached.

***

The folding chair on the front porch squeaked under Blue’s butt as she settled onto it. It was a humid, quiet night, the type that forced her to hear her own heartbeat. Behind it, even with the door shut, the sounds of the boys and their joy leaked out.

Her stomach ached. She used to think it was hunger, because that’s what it felt like. An absence she could fill, that would go away if only she saw a little more of the world. Longing, she guessed. She’d known longing as long as she’d been alive; she’d longed for so much. To know more. To do more. To be a part of more.

But the hunger never waned. The opposite, even. The more she saw, the more she wanted to see. 

So maybe it wasn’t longing after all. Maybe it was just love. Maybe that’s just how love was — something that grew the more you fed it, the more you got to know it. Something insatiable.

Or maybe it was just a symptom of summer. Maybe it was because the city was too bright for stars but the sky was too dark for much else, leaving her nothing to watch but the tail-lights on passing cars. Maybe it was all the boys inside. Maybe it was her, sitting alone on the porch. 

Whatever it was, she was sick with it tonight. 

She grew tired of watching traffic and all its stops and starts. So she shut her eyes and watched it again in her mind. Henry, nose-to-nose with Gansey. Gansey, wide-eyed and stone-still. And her, doing nothing about it. Any one of them could’ve interceded. But they all just let it happen. She rewound the memory and tried to slow down the details. Henry had paused. Premeditation, or wishful thinking? Gansey’s jaw had flexed. Was he surprised, or kissing back? 

It was just a gag. Just Henry’s usual showmanship, worsened by alcohol and old friends. If she really tried, it didn’t have to mean anything. 

But she couldn’t stop seeing the knight on horseback. Impulse and action. Adventure and passion. Someone to you. Someone to both of you. 

She’d known it was him for a while now. Since before they even left for the road trip. Maybe since the morning after the unmaking, when Blue had returned Henry his freshly-washed sweater, like there was any way to wash out the fact that Gansey had died in it. Henry had put on a smile brighter than sunrise and said, “I guess Dick really did want to join us in Venezuela.” 

And she’d known what it meant for a while now, too. Since the day they left on this trip, since the rightness became inescapable. Or maybe since the morning she woke up and, one foot in a dream, thought it was Henry’s chest she was sleeping against. 

But she couldn’t think about it. Not without thinking of Noah and the cold press of his lips and the cold presence of his energy and the colder knowing in the weeks after the unmaking, when the ley line returned but Noah didn’t. Not without thinking of Gansey and the kiss without a kiss and the kiss _with_ a kiss and the weight of his body as he died in her arms. 

Fate could say what it pleased — she worked hard to be unbothered by it. It was their hearts she was worried about. That hunger, and how much it would eat up if she let it. 

The door creaked open, and she startled out of her skin. “Jeez, Gansey,” she said, furious while her heart sped along, but the furor died as soon as she saw him. His fine silhouette, the slope of his shoulders, the nervous press of his fingers into his own palms. 

If it wasn’t really hunger, she couldn’t really starve. Even if she felt like it, sometimes. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, hastily, and then settled, stilled, sat down beside her.

She took his hand. He wasn’t expecting it. He didn’t drink much, so when he did, it turned him transparent. Like all his masks took a little longer to place, giving wide glimpses of the truth underneath. Even without the alcohol, she was seeing more and more of him each day. Every town they stopped in, he left a little more of his guard behind. Some nights, now, he even slept. 

But now, he spoke to their hands, clasped on his knee. “I’m sorry,” he said again, more deliberately.

“It’s fine,” she said, turning her eyes back to the darkness. 

With his free hand, he rubbed an absent thumb over his lip. She refused to watch. 

A person could get used to all sorts of things, if given enough time. Maybe, someday, she’d get used to the greedy pit in her stomach.

The silence stretched out before them, while moisture grew in their clasped palms, while Gansey figured himself out. This, she had gotten used to. When it was just her and Gansey, there were lots of moments like this. Where he was quiet, because he had to be, and she was waiting until he had something he could put into words. 

It happened less with Henry. It was like he had a different vantage on Gansey, from which he could see the knots in Gansey’s thoughts and pluck them loose with ease. But he did the same with her. Like, when she was homesick and she couldn’t say it because she didn’t want Gansey to think it had anything to do with him. Or when she was worried for him and couldn’t say so because she didn’t want to mother. Henry was so good at translating between them when Gansey couldn’t muster up the nerve to ask what he wanted or Blue couldn’t figure out how to say what she knew. 

It’s not that she and Gansey weren’t compatible on their own. They were. Of course they were. But things were better with Henry. Better with three. 

She wished he was here now. Even though this was his fault. 

Finally, Gansey asked, “Are you angry?”

“No,” she said, “I’m jealous.”

And she waited. Waited for him to ask of who. Waited for the chance to finally, finally say _both of you._

But he didn’t. He just pushed his thumb against his bottom lip and turned his eyes toward the traffic, toward all the halting and the going-nowhere.

He didn’t ask. Which Blue thought meant he already knew the answer. And that was one more thing she didn’t know what to do with.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAST CHAPTER HERE WE GO. this is why it's called the yeehaw junction fic. they're so repressed and in love. every time maggie gives extra-canon decrees (like "bluesey still cant kiss") a fic-writer finds a way to make it bigger and gayer and better. Enjoy !!

On the third of July, they’d returned to Henrietta to wish Adam a happy birthday. 

That night, they’d all gone to sleep in separate rooms of the Barns, and Gansey hadn’t slept a wink. It was strange to be home; everything was so the same, but he felt so changed. It was strange to see Ronan and Adam; they had changed too while he wasn’t looking. It was strange to try to fall asleep so far away from Blue and Henry; he had only his own breath to lull him.

In a way, strangeness clarified things. Highlighted what was right, what was true. So when he got up the next morning, he knew both that he loved his home and his friends who lived there, and that he loved travelling with Blue and Henry, and that there was no part of him that could ever give up one or the other.

But for now, he knew there was more strangeness and rightness and trueness to find.

On the fourth of July, they’d made it to Miami just in time to watch fireworks over the open ocean. 

That night, they’d gone to sleep in high-rise hotel room, in two big beds. They woke up with the balcony doors still open, the room still smelling like smoke and sea.

On the fifth of July, they were meant to drive a few hours north and spend a night at a camp in the Everglades. 

But when they woke up, the sky was like war. 

“When I said I thought a swamp tour would be fun,” Henry said, his sneakers sinking in a muddy puddle outside a 7/11, “this wasn’t what I meant.” 

In the four yards between the convenience store and the Pig, the sky opened up again. They rushed into the safety of the car — Gansey at the wheel, still most comfortable driving when it came to inclement weather — and his friends in the backseat, divvying up the snacks and attempting to dry off on one another’s clothes though they were both equally damp. 

The meteorologists had promised them that the tropical storm was going to curl off into the ocean. Clearly, the meteorologists had been wrong. They’d been right about this though: it wasn’t a hurricane. Just the sheer edges of it. Just enough rain to turn poorly-constructed roads into rivers. Just enough wind to down weak telephone poles. Just enough storm to scare just enough residents up the interstate to sufficiently block the roads. 

They spent three hours crawling between exits on the highway, hoping the ever-increasing rain and wind would propel traffic out of their way. It didn’t. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, traffic came to a total standstill, and the worst of the weather was quickly moving in. 

“Someone call Lynch and ask if he hurricane-proofed this whip.”

Gansey lifted his phone from the cup-holder. It informed him that there was no signal. 

They got off at the very next exit. 

It was a town called ‘Yeehaw Junction.’ Or maybe not a town as much as a road. Or maybe not a road as much as a single stop sign. There was a toll plaza, a gas station, and a building with ‘Desert Inn Bar Restaurant’ written on the side. The desert, bar, and restaurant parts all appeared to be patently untrue, and even the inn part seemed overstated, as it looked like there were only three rooms, all advertised for a flat rate of $45.

“What are the chances that they have a room?” Blue asked, her voice raised over the battering of rain, and it was unclear if she wished them good chances or bad ones.

The chances, as it turned out, were slim. So slim that they eked out with the very last room. 

“This should blow over by morning,” the man at the desk assured them, handing Gansey a rusted room key. “Electric’s out, but there’s ice in the hallway if you need to cool down.”

It was hot, ungodly so, but Gansey wouldn’t touch that ice if he were on the surface of the sun. But he thanked the man anyway, and with a duffle bag over his shoulder and Blue and Henry right behind him, they made the sprint down the open hallway to the room marked theirs. 

Room 3. 

They were soaked by the time they got there, and twofold by the time Gansey shimmied the door open. One by one, they fell through the doorway, hitting a wall of air so humid and heavy that it felt like breathing in an oven. 

With everyone inside, Blue fell back against the door with all her weight. It slammed shut, turning the howling wind to a dull rumble.

And then Henry said, “Dibs on the floor.”

Gansey blinked. The room was mostly windows, with thin red shades pulled across them. But with the sky dark from the storm, it was like stepping into a heart — muted, sweltering, dim but for the shadow rush of rain behind the curtains.

The rest of the room took shape. A TV covered in a film of dust. A marbled bedside lamp, rendered useless. A sink and a bathroom door that hung on its hinges and—

one bed.

“Oh,” Gansey said, just as Blue said, “No.”

“It’s fine,” Henry said. “It’s good for the posture, I hear.”

“No,” Blue reiterated, and Gansey joined her. “You can’t sleep on this floor.” 

“I bet the bed has bugs,” Henry said. Gansey didn’t doubt it. The bed had a metal frame with wheels on it, and a tan bedspread that may have once been white, so bugs were certainly not out of the question. “I refuse to get lice. Maybe you can shave your head on a whim, Blue, but I’ve invested far too much on—“

“If the bed has bugs, the floor has something worse,” Gansey said, toeing the mangy carpet. If there were any real light to be had, he was certain it would be stained.

But while he was investigating the floor, Blue was watching him. He felt her gaze burning into the side of his head, but he couldn’t look up to meet it.

“If my hair faces consequences of this, you are both responsible,” Henry said. He crossed immediately over to the bathroom, shouldering the door open and shut behind him. 

A shower would be nice. His skin was so warm and wet that mosquitos could breed on it. But hotter and more uncomfortable than anything was the look Blue was giving him. 

Gansey gestured to the windows. “Shouldn’t they be shuttered or something? It doesn’t seem safe.”

“Safe as life,” she said, finally freeing Gansey from scrutiny as she slumped her backpack onto the floor.

Henry barged back out of the bathroom, his wet shirt stuck crookedly across his shoulders like it had been taken off and hastily replaced. “Nevermind that,” he said, “Water’s off too.”

“I hear there’s ice,” Blue said, voice dry as a bone. 

“Did you miss the part where I’m doing my best not to get communicable diseases?”

The room was getting hotter the longer they stood in it. The air was strange. Stranger than the Barns. Not strange like a spot-the-difference picture, full of tiny changes. Strange altogether, unfamiliar, uncharted. Blue was always sharp, but she was an open switchblade now, and he didn’t know what he’d done to deploy her. He looked to Henry for help, but there was something pointed about him too, his tone, his posture, the slice of bare stomach where his shirt was stuck. 

Gansey looked away. 

None of them moved toward the bed. But there was nowhere else to sit. So, finally, Gansey sat down on the edge of the mattress. It let out a heavy groan.

“Charming,” Henry said. 

He flexed his hands into fists on his knees, muscles coiling, nerves firing. Thunder rumbled and his heart pounded. 

Without a word, Blue produced an unlabeled water bottle from her backpack. 

They’d picked it up on the side of the road in North Carolina, from a man who didn’t care much for checking IDs. It was meant to be a souvenir, a gag. They hadn’t done more than smell it. 

But Henry immediately said, “Yes,” and held out his hand. Blue tipped it into his palm and he tipped it up into his mouth without hesitation, letting out a horrible hiss and a full thirty seconds of coughing as he passed it back to Blue.

She took a sip too, with just as much distress. 

And then it was Gansey’s turn. Holding it felt dangerous, like it was alight, like it might combust. As he took a sip, as the alcohol seared down his throat like gasoline, he thought maybe none of them would come out of this night unburned.

***

There had always been rules. Sleeping arrangements; sidewalk arrangements; who held hands with who. But since Vancouver, there were boundaries. Real lines, drawn as clear as a finger through dust on blinding orange paint.

They didn’t drink. They didn’t watch movies that left them feeling lonely. They didn’t talk about that time that Henry kissed Gansey. They didn’t talk about why.

Henry resented it a little. But he understood it. The lines were sometimes exhausting to navigate, but they were necessary, the way lines on a highway were necessary. To keep them safe. To keep them from crashing and burning. 

But it was something about the rain. Or something about this room. Or something about the way the air was unbreathable, or something about the busted plans and the boredom. 

They were supposed to be in the Everglades, rowing down a river in a canoe. 

Instead, they were here. In the almost-dark of a summer storm at 6 pm; in no air conditioning, in no electricity; in the same bed, on top of the same sheets.

Henry was laying in the middle. He wasn’t sure how. He wasn’t sure of anything except one thing: This was not allowed. 

Nor was the bottle of moonshine they were passing back and forth. By method of being in the middle, he was getting drunk quicker than the others. 

They didn’t talk about it. That was fine — Henry didn’t need to talk. But he couldn’t help but think about it, sometimes, in moments like this. 

There was no recalling it without a swell of guilt. It was a kiss he had taken, not a kiss he had earned, and no reminding himself that Gansey had kissed him back did any good to quell his feelings on the matter. 

But there were things that happened after that that he couldn’t ever truly shake. Like, when Gansey and Blue had gone outside and he had seated himself alone in the corner in a self-appointed timeout, the way Cheng2 caught him by the arm and asked what was wrong.

“I made a miscalculation,” Henry said, or tried to say, though his tongue slipped on the syllables. 

“What miscalculation?”

Even then, even immediately after it had happened, Henry had known he wasn’t supposed to talk about it. But he managed, “That. With Gansey.” 

Cheng2 frowned contemplatively. “What?”

“I shouldn’t’ve, you know.”

“Why?” A thousand reasons. But before he could list a single one, Cheng2 continued, “You’re not already dating?”

It was the last question he expected. “Gansey?”

Cheng2 shook his head. “Both of them.”

Both of them. Sometimes, it was like they were. When it was just the three of them, yelling down the highway to the few songs they could agree on, or in hotel rooms when they were too tired to speak but they didn’t even have to, because they knew each other well enough now to navigate without words. 

But here they were, three in a bed, drinking from the same bottle, not touching. Blue, with her legs curled up, muddy shoes kicked to the end of the bed. Gansey, with his arms carefully crossed, water droplets dried onto the lenses of his glasses. 

It’d been half an hour since anyone said anything. The silence was starting to burn his throat more than the moonshine. He should’ve just closed his eyes and went to sleep. But this moment felt thin, ready to burst, and if he didn’t ask now, he might never know.

“I just want to know,” he said, his voice raw from the constraints of his better judgment, “what makes it different.”

Because of course it was different. Henry had never met two people toward whom he’d felt exactly the same. But what he felt for Blue and what he felt for Gansey were made of the same pieces: the knowing, and the haven of it; the longing, and the ache of it; the feeling of being at home under any sky. 

It was what Blue and Gansey felt for each other. It was what they felt for him too. He knew it with a certainty he couldn’t explain. Jeong, maybe. Love, maybe. Henry wasn’t good with words. 

But if it was the same, then why was it different? In the daylight, he could come up with reasons: Blue-and-Gansey had come first; Gansey was straight; anything they felt for him was just a stand-in attraction because he was available in a way that they weren’t. But in the half-light of the world ending and their quiet breathing on both sides of him, it all felt like excuses.

So he waited. And waited. Until he wondered if he’d forgotten to say it aloud. If they were just going to ignore him. If he’d made a mistake again. 

His tongue was sticky. He wasn’t drunk, not nearly, but he could blame the alcohol. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“No,” Blue said.

So he held his breath and waited again. 

Until Gansey exhaled. “What makes it different is that, with you, we _could_. And that’s…” he swallowed, “unfair.”

When he said it like that, it was obvious. It was unfair, to ask either of them to have feelings for him when they could never act on their feelings for each other. It was unfair, to ask either of them to be okay with watching their partner act with someone else.

So of course he was guilty. And even guiltier still for the fact that an answer had changed nothing. Because it was unfair in more ways than just that. Unfair to leave him there, a part of everything but also apart from it. Unfair to each of them, to deprive themselves of something they _could_ have just because of what they couldn’t. Unfair to all three of them, for all that they could be.

But he couldn’t say that. Wouldn’t. It was selfish enough to even ask; it was outright cruel to tell them what they already knew. 

So that was the end of it, he told himself. So now he knew. And that would have to be enough. 

Until Blue said, “It’s already not fair.” 

_Yes_ , Henry thought, so powerfully his head spun. But he said, “How do you mean?”

“You and Gansey got to kiss once.”

“I’ve apologized,” Henry said. “I thought that was—“

“Shut up,” Blue said. Henry turned to look at her, anticipating anger or jealousy, but her face was thoughtful, from the concentrated line of her lips to the fold between her brows. “You and Gansey got to kiss once, and me and Gansey got to kiss once.” 

“I see,” Gansey said, sitting up enough to see over him.

Blue’s eyes met Gansey’s, clear and intentioned, asking a question he couldn’t identify. 

Without his noticing, Blue had slipped the reigns out from between his fingers and taken control of this conversation. He didn’t know where they were headed, now, but his heart charged fearlessly ahead.

Looking between Blue and Gansey as they spoke without words, he was reminded, very suddenly, of why they were having this conversation in the first place.

“It’s not fair that you’ve gotten a kiss,” she said, gesturing between he and Gansey, “and that we’ve gotten a kiss,” gesturing between herself and Gansey, “but that _we_ haven’t.”

Her hand stopped gesturing and fell limply against his bicep. He felt his pulse in every capillary.

When she said it like that, it sounded so, so sensible.

***

It was not sensible. She knew it wasn’t. But she decided right then not to care. Because Henry was looking at her with a desperation in his eye that perfectly mirrored the hungry pit in her stomach, and she would pay any price to remedy it for him, for both of them.

Or, almost any price. She lifted her chin and looked to Gansey. 

“That sounds fair,” he said, but his voice was taught. 

“Are you sure?” she said. 

“Just once,” Henry said, “so it’s even.” 

“I said it sounds fair,” he said, but his voice caught on the corner of an emotion before he tugged it smooth. 

She wanted this. But not at the cost of hurting Gansey any more than the fact of her kiss already had. Not if this was an attempt to punish himself out of misplaced guilt, not if he couldn’t be honest about it. “Nevermind,” she said, “Forget it—“

“No,” Gansey said, and there, it caught again; this time, it tore. Not anger, not sadness, not disappointment or jealousy, but a bright spot of appetite. He was just as hungry, just better at hiding it. But he wasn’t hiding it now, or he couldn’t anymore, and something came unraveled inside Blue at the thought. 

“Just once,” she promised him. 

“Just once,” Henry promised too. 

And then there was nothing to do but do it. 

She’d thought about it plenty of times, played out the details. Henry moisturized, kept a clean shave; his chin would be soft against hers. He wore honey-flavored chapstick; she knew the way his lips would taste, because she’d borrowed it once without asking. A thousand times, she remembered the way he kissed Gansey, the tilt of his jaw, how he grabbed him by the back of the neck. 

But this was none of that. Henry’s lip trembled, hesitant. Her mouth tasted too much like moonshine to taste his. She held his shoulder to keep them both steady, and he held her wrist there, the only sure thing in the moment.

It was awkward, but if she leaned away, it’d be over, and that was far worse.

So she leaned in, and he yielded under her like sand. 

There, she found things she’d never thought to think. The tack of his hair gel, softened by the rain. The faux-confidence he carried with him everywhere, bolstered by her own. The horrible, seasick rush of a kiss that could _last_ , a kiss that could happen again and again and again. It was clumsy now, but already they were getting the hang of it. Given time and practice, they could get it just right.

Henry broke off. 

It was the third kiss of her life, and both Noah and Gansey had taught her the dread of the moment after. The sadness when reality washed back in.

Blue opened her eyes, vision spotted with her heartbeat. Henry was flush. Over his shoulder, Gansey’s eyes were shut. 

There it was. The crash, the fall. 

“Gansey,” she said.

He opened his eyes. Looked over at her. There was no mask in place. He was pale and barely contained, arms still crossed over his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was thick, slow, like he was treading through quicksand. “I just, I didn’t know.” His fingers flexed against his bicep. Holding himself together. “I don’t know. I— don’t think I should be here.”

Panic flashed in Henry’s eyes. “Gansey—“ he said, but if there was more to that thought, he swallowed it.

Blue’s heart cracked clean down the middle. Two pieces. One for each of them.

“No,” Blue said, “Stop it.”

Both boys did. Freezing, looking toward her, anticipation and dread sketched on both of their faces. Her heartbeat was dizzying, and this was so stupid. As stupid as trying to avoid that day on the side of the highway. As stupid as hoping the sun wouldn’t set. 

Because it would. Night would come. Fate would have its hand in whatever it pleased. And she was tired of fighting it. 

“Henry,” she said. “Can you pass that kiss to Gansey?”

Gansey went even stiller, somehow.

Slowly, Henry said, “But then it wont be fair again.”

Nothing was fair. Not falling for the boy she could kill. Not falling for the knight in between them. 

“I don’t care.”

That was all it took. Henry turned toward Gansey and then they were kissing too.

Blue understood, then, why Gansey had shut his eyes. It was almost too much. Grief for what she and Gansey couldn’t have. Gratitude for what they did. The urge to plant her lips in the space right behind Henry’s ear. To reach over him and put her hand on Gansey’s throat and feel his heartbeat. The need to stay perfectly still; the certainty that so much as a breath or a blink would deprive her of something vital. 

She didn’t look away until the boys pulled apart, sinking back into their spots on the bed, breathless. 

“What is this?” Gansey asked the ceiling, his cheeks pale and pink in equal measure.

Blue reached across Henry’s hip to twist her fingers into Gansey’s. Henry put his arm around Blue’s shoulder. 

“I don’t know,” she said. She didn’t know anything — only what she’d always known. That this was right. That she wanted something more. That she was a mirror and anything she wanted was reflected back in Gansey and Henry, twofold, threefold, bright enough to light the world. 

Thunder cracked and lightning flashed and the room lit up red. “Then… what?” Henry asked. “What now?”

“Now,” Blue said, her heart in her voice, the whole hungry, terrified, electrified thing, “whatever comes next.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! thank u all for encouraging me to get this thing Done. feels good to finally share it. i hope it lived up to all the hopes!!! :') 
> 
> [reblogs](https://gaybluesargent.tumblr.com/post/185615683671/whatever-comes-next-chapter-3), comments, and feedback are always super appreciated!! & follow me up on tumblr [@gaybluesargent](http://gaybluesargent.tumblr.com)!


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